At just before eleven that night, Harry, Hermione, Neville, and I went down to the entrance hall to meet Mr. Filch for our detention. I wondered what we would be doing as there really wasn't much that could be done in the Entrance Hall apart from cleaning the floor or something like that.
Filch was already there when we arrived so we just had to wait for Malfoy, who came swaggering towards us a few minutes later.
"Come along," Filch said, completely ignoring the fact that Malfoy was late. We all followed him in silence out of the castle and down the familiar path to Hagrid's. "It's a pity they let the old punishments die. There was a time detention would find you hanging by your thumbs in the dungeons. God, I miss the screaming." Harry and I shared a nervous glance.
"Is that you, Filch?" Hagrid's familiar voice called over to us, as we reached his darkly lit hut. "Hurry up, I want ter get started."
The relief that I felt that we would be serving detention with Hagrid was incredible, but this relief must have shown on my face, because Filch said, "I suppose you think you'll be enjoying yourself with that oaf? Well, think again, girl—it's into the Forest you're going and I'm much mistaken if you'll all come out in one piece."
Hearing this, Neville whimpered slightly, moving closer to Hermione, who was next to him. Malfoy on the other hand, stopped dead in his tracks, making me have to quickly swerve out of the way of him so I didn't walk into him.
"The forest?" Malfoy repeated. "We can't go in there at night—there's all sorts of things in there—werewolves, I heard."
"It's not a full moon tonight, I'm sure you'll be fine," I snarled at Malfoy, thinking back to how Remus had been shunned all his life for being what he was.
Hagrid and Fang then came out of the, now dark, hut, a crossbow and quiver of arrows flung over his shoulder.
"Abou' time," Hagrid grunted, walking over to us. "I bin waitin' fer half an hour already. All right, Harry, Hermione, Emery?"
"I shouldn't be too friendly to them," Filch said coldly. "They're here to be punished, after all."
"That's why yer late, is it? Bin lecturin' them, eh?" Hagrid challenged Filch, frowning slightly. "'Snot your place ter do that. Yeh've done yer bit, I'll take over from here."
"I'll be back at dawn, for what's left of them," Filch said nastily, turning and stalking away up to the castle.
As soon as Hagrid turned back to face us, Malfoy turned to Hagrid.
"I'm not going in that forest," Malfoy said defiantly. I was glad to hear some panic in my dear cousins voice.
"Yeh are if yer want ter stay at Hogwarts," Hagrid countered. "Yeh've done wrong an' now yeh've got ter pay for it."
"But this is servant stuff, it's not for students to do. I thought we'd be writing lines or something. If my father knew I was doing this, he'd—" Malfoy began, but Hagrid cut him off.
"—tell yer that's how I is at Hogwarts. Writin' lines! What good's that ter anyone? Yeh'll do summat useful or yeh'll get out. If yeh think yer father's rather you were expelled, then get back ter the castle an' pack. Go on!" Hagrid said ferociously.
Malfoy remained silent, his eyes probably piercing mental holes in Hagrid's skull. Hagrid then turned away from Malfoy and instead decided to rest his gaze on the rest of us.
"Right then. Now, listen carefully, 'cause it's dangerous what we're gonna do tonight an' I don' want no one takin' risks. Follow me over here a moment," Hagrid continued, leading us over to the edge of the forest. "Look there. See that stuff shinin' on the ground? Silvery stuff? That's unicorn blood. There's a unicorn in there bin hurt badly by summat. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We're gonna try an' find the poor creature."
"But what if it can't be saved?" I asked.
"I'm afraid we might have ter put it out of its misery," Hagrid informed us sadly, making me sigh.
"Who cares about that? What if the thing that hurt the unicorn finds us first?" Malfoy asked, fear evident in his voice.
"There's nothin' that lives in the Forest that'll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang," Hagrid assured him. "An' keep ter the path. Right, now, we're gonna split inter two parties an' follow the trail in diff'rent directions. There's blood all over the place, it must've bin staggerin' around since last night at least."
"I want Fang," Malfoy demanded, making us all look over at the ferocious looking boarhound.
"Fine," Hagrid agreed. "But just so you know, he's a bloody coward. So me, Harry an' Hermione'll go one way an' Draco, Neville, Emery an' Fang'll go the other." Hagrid gave me a sympathetic look. "Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we'll send up green sparks, right? An' if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an' we'll all come an' find yeh—so, be careful—let's go."
Neville, Malfoy, Fang, and I all walked in the opposite direction from the others. We were walking in silence for a few minutes before our vision got too dark so I took out my wand and muttered a handy little spell.
"Lumos."
With the extra light now there, we carried on walking before Neville spoke up.
"What do you think is hurting the unicorns?" Neville asked me, but before I could answer, Malfoy spoke up.
"I bet it's like a vicious werewolf," Malfoy told Neville, forgetting about his own fear, and instead trying to scare Neville.
"Oh, shut up, Malfoy," I warned him before looking over at Neville. "Don't worry, Neville. There aren't any werewolves in here."
Ok, that was technically a lie as I am pretty sure there was but Neville didn't need something else to be scared of.
"You promise?" Neville asked.
"I promise," I assured him. "And anyway, if whatever hurt that unicorn finds us first, we'll chuck Malfoy at it and then leg it."
"Hey!" Malfoy exclaimed, but we both ignored him.
"Ok," Neville agreed, a small glimmer of a smile on his face.
Not long later, I noticed that Malfoy was no longer with us, and clearly so had Neville.
"Where's he gone? Do you think the monster got him?" Neville whimpered, stepping closer to me.
"Malfoy! Wherever you are, this is not funny!" I called out to the darkness. "If you aren't back here in literally five seconds, we're leaving with out you and we're taking Fang!"
The dark forest around us remained silent before Neville grabbed my arm and his loud scream echoed around me. Panicked, I fired a red spark into the air and turned to face Neville.
It was clear to me what had happened straight away. Malfoy had jumped out at Neville.
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" I accused a laughing Malfoy.
"You should have seen your faces," Malfoy laughed.
Neville was still physically shaking so I linked my arm with his, whistled for Fang and continued walking away from Malfoy, muttering angrily under my breath.
But we had only made it a few feet when the loud thrashing of someone running through the branches occurred. I turned to my left and saw Hagrid running over to us.
"Emery, Neville, are you alright?" Hagrid asked.
"We're fine. Malfoy just thought it would be funny to jump out and scare us," I told Hagrid.
"Oh, Merlin's beard?!" Hagrid complained loudly. "Right, well, you'd better come back with me. The others'll be worried."
The three of us followed Hagrid, and every now and then you could hear Malfoy laughing quietly to himself. A few minutes later, I saw two pairs of terrified eyes staring back at us.
"Emery, are you ok?" Hermione asked, running over to us, and pulling me into a hug.
"Yeah. I'm fine," I assured her.
"We'll be lucky ter catch anythin' now, with the racket you three were makin'. Right, we're changin' groups. Neville, you stay with me an' Hermione, Harry, you go with Emery, Fang, an' this idiot," Hagrid said.
So the three of us set back off into the heart of the Forest with Fang leading the way.
"You wait till my father hears about this. This is servants stuff," Malfoy complained.
"If I didn't know any better, Draco, I'd say you were scared," Harry replied, making me smile.
"I'm not scared, Potter," Malfoy scoffed, back quickly looked behind him when we heard a distant howl. "Did you hear that?" Harry and I shared an amused glance, a glance which Malfoy noticed. This caused Malfoy to walk ahead with Fang muttering to himself. "Come on, Fang. Scared."
About half an hour later, the path had become almost impossible for us to see, even with my wand giving off a fair amount of light. I could have sworn that I saw a shadow walking past us not that ling ago but thought it must have just ben a centaur as I knew that they inhabited most of the forest.
By now we had approached a piece of flat ground that had gnarled roots all over it. Fang then stopped and started to growl.
"What is it, Fang?" I asked, crouching down next to him.
I followed his gaze and froze in my spot when I saw what Fang was growling at. There was a cloaked figure crouching over the dead unicorn, drinking its blood from a large gash in the neck. It hadn't noticed us and it probably wouldn't have if, when I finally tried to move back, hadn't stepped on a twig. The figure raised its head, silver blood drooling from its bared mouth.
This caused Malfoy to scream, his face filled with pure terror, and run away with Fang. Harry on the other hand was grasping onto his scar.
"Harry!" I exclaimed, running over to him.
"Go get Hagrid. Quick!" Harry instructed me.
Part of me wanted to stay and make sure he was alright but the rational part agreed with Harry and that was the part I listened to. But before I left, using the knowledge that Remus had taught me, I raised my wand at the clocked figure.
"Stupefy!"
The figure fell back and I ran like I never had before. Firing a mixture of green and red sparks into the air as I ran, I looked around for Hagrid.
"Hagrid!" I called out, hoping that he would hear me. "Hagrid!"
I couldn't see or hear anyone so I kept running in the direction we had come from. I have no idea how long I was running for but my legs and lungs were starting to tire out.
"Come on," I muttered to myself. "Hagrid!"
"Emery?!" Hagrid's familiar voice final spoke back. "Where are you?"
"I'm over here!" I called back, firing a spell into the air.
Hagrid, Neville, Malfoy, Fang and Hermione came running over to me.
"What's going on?" Hermione asked.
"No time to explain," I replied. "Harry needs our help, Come on."
Ignoring the ache in my legs, I began to lead the others to where I had left Harry. The others were hot on my tail, and within no time at all, we reached the clearing.
Hagrid immediately raised his crossbow at the person standing near Harry but lowered it when he clearly recognised the person.
"Harry!" I called over to him, to let him know we were back.
"Hello there, Firenze," Hagrid said to the centaur, who stood beside Harry. "I see you've met our young Mr. Potter. You alright there, Harry?" Harry nodded.
"Harry Potter, this is where I leave you. You're safe now. Good luck," Firenze said before he galloped away.
Only now could we get a good look at the poor unicorn. It was really quite upsetting how he lay there, so helpless, and alone. Whoever or whatever had killed this unicorn clearly was desperate; they would now be living with a cursed life.
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After leaving the Dark Forest, Hagrid led us back up to the castle, not wanting to wait for Filch. Ron had dozed off in his seat at the fireplace so when we walked in, Hermione nudged him awake so Harry could explain what had happened.
"You mean You-Know-Who's out there, right now, in the forest?" Hermione asked.
"But he's weak. He's living off the unicorns. Don't you see? We had it wrong! Snape doesn't want the Stone for himself; he wants it for Voldemort. With the Elixir of Life, Voldemort will be strong again. He'll... he'll come back," Harry explained, pacing around in front of us.
"But, if he comes back, you don't think he'll try to... kill you, do you?" Ron asked.
"I think if he'd had the chance, he might've tried to kill me tonight," Harry replied.
"And to think I've been worrying about my potions final," Ron commented.
"Hang on a minute," I spoke up, getting all of their attention. "We're forgetting one thing. Who's the one wizard Voldemort always feared? Dumbledore. As long as Dumbledore's around, Harry, you're safe. As long as Dumbledore's around, you can't be touched." I gave Harry a reassuring smile to which he nodded in appreciation.
After tonight I have forever been put off detention. Especially if it means getting almost killed by a half alive Voldemort.
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